Daily Trust - the online edition

The Nigerian National Merit Award (NNMA), said yesterday it has started the process of scaling up the award cash prize for its laureates.

Alhaji Adamu Mu’azu, the NNMA Secretary, who announced this in Abuja when he received students of the University of Abuja on excursion to Merit House, said plans were on to raise the cash prize to N10 million.

NNMA secretary said the awardees were currently receiving N1 million as against N100,000 given out in 1999.

Mu’azu said NNMA has invested most of its budgetary allocations amounting to more than N75 million in blue-chip companies.

"Our investment in blue-chip companies has resulted in our initial N75 million investment increasing to about N140 million,’’ he said.

He said NNMA was making such investments to achieve self-sufficiency in rewarding Nigerians who excelled in their various fields.

Mu’azu said the organisation was working to ensure that the cash prize award was equivalent to the 3.2 million dollars Nobel prize award.

He said the organisation in its 29 years of existence has awarded the Nigerian National Order of Merit (NNOM) to only 54 eminent Nigerians who have distinguished themselves in various fields of academic endeavour.

"The award is merit-driven and recognised internationally; no laureate of NNOM since

1979 has being ridiculed or said to be unfit for the award,’’ Mu’azu said.

He said an annual forum of laureates has being instituted to ensure that "those eminent Nigerians bring their wealth of knowledge and experience to bear on national development". (NAN)